Alabama Voices: Julian McPhillips: Why I endorsed Steven Reed

'Let's put racial politics behind us'

I respect Morris Dees and appreciate the good work of the Southern Poverty Law Center he co-founded. Dees and the SPLC have pursued a number of landmark cases that have helped blacks and other minorities.

I must take exception, however, to Morris' strong suggestion that Steven Reed was elected as probate judge of Montgomery County because of his race. Morris further suggests that white candidates have no chance of election in Montgomery County anymore because of their race.

Has Morris forgotten that, in the city of Montgomery (with a higher black percentage than the county), Bobby Bright and Todd Strange both won elections in recent years, despite black opponents and a majority black vote? Additionally, in 2010, white north Alabamian Ron Sparks overwhelmingly defeated black candidate Artur Davis in Montgomery County in the Democratic primary for governor, even though Davis was born and raised in Montgomery County. I supported Sparks.

Dees also bemoans that three white candidates in the last Democratic primary lost by large margins. What he fails to say is that all three winning Democrats, though black, had many white supporters, including me. All three winners - Troy Massey for district judge, Tiffany McCord for circuit clerk and Steven Reed for probate judge - had strong credentials and were highly respectable candidates.

Dees quotes a prominent black leader, who saw a TV commercial Dees cut for McKinney, asking the question, "When will the time come when a white person will endorse a black candidate?" I'm sure that has happened on numerous occasions before, including when I cut a TV commercial for McCord last March and did a newspaper endorsement for Reed this election.

There were several nonracial issues influencing the outcome of the Reed-McKinney race, with many blacks voting for McKinney and many whites voting for Reed.

Dees himself alluded to one such issue, namely the land deal dispute for Hyundai-site acquisitions. I heard from several white friends still upset over McKinney suing former Montgomery County Commissioner Bill Joseph in this matter. Whatever the merits of the suit, Joseph was and still is immensely popular in Montgomery, especially in the white community, and this backfired on McKinney, probably costing him many votes.

Other voters felt McKinney and his office have too easily allowed Montgomery citizens to be involuntarily committed for mental health reasons. Indeed, three times the number of Montgomerians, percentage-wise as to the population, have been committed, compared to citizens of Birmingham, Huntsville or Mobile.

Steven Reed impresses me as a mature, well-educated young man, polished by his professional experiences in Atlanta and Dallas before returning home. The fact that he is Democratic leader Joe Reed's son helped him with many blacks, but it also hurt him with others, both black and white.

Steven Reed carefully refrained from injecting race into the campaign and believes that no one else did so until Morris Dees and Reese McKinney injected race in their broadcast campaign ads.

Let's put racial politics behind us. It is time for all Montgomerians - white and black - to congratulate Steven Reed. It's time for all to thank Reese McKinney for his service. As Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous quote reminds us, a man should be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.

Julian McPhillips is a Montgomery attorney.

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Alabama Voices: Julian McPhillips: Why I endorsed Steven Reed

I respect Morris Dees and appreciate the good work of the Southern Poverty Law Center he co-founded. Dees and the SPLC have pursued a number of landmark cases that have helped blacks and other

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